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Gift of
Phelps Trust Association
1926

CONSTANTINOPLE

CONSTANTINOPLE

CONSTANTINOPLE

BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDWIN L. WEEKS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1895

Copyright, 1895, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPi
NEW YORK

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Constantinople,  Frontispiece
The Golden Horn — Sunset, .... Facing page i
PAGE
Entrance to Seraskierat Mosque,  5
An Armenian,  p
Galata Bridge from the Cafe,  //
Galata Bridge,  13
A Fruit Seller,  16
A Street Water-Carrier,  18
A Water-Carrier,  . . 21
More than One Rebellious Beatity of the
Harem was Carried Out,  27
vii

PAGE

Boat-houses on the Golden Horn, . . 2g
Sweet Waters of Asia — Bosphorus, . Ji
Sweet Waters of Europe  jj
On a Steamer — Golden Horn,  37
A Glimpse of St. Sophia, ..... . jg

Vieiu from Eytib Looking Over the Golden
 42

Horn, 

Street Fountain at Stamboul,  46
Ice-cream Seller,  48
Street Scene in Stamboul — Cafe Frequented
by Greeks,  31
Court of the Mosque of Sultan Bdyczid, . . jj
Tomb of One of the Sultans in the Court
of St. Sophia,  61
The Cemetery  64.
Old Towers Outside the Walls of Stamboul. 63
viii

Armenian Beggar,  67
Entrance to the Mtmicipal Garden at Pera
— After the Concert — Twilight, . . . 6g
The Landing Place and Cafe" at Scutari, . 73
The Sultan's Kiosk — "Sweet Waters of
Ettrope,"  76
Old Gateway in the Wall,  78

The Golden Horn — Sunset.

CONSTANTINOPLE

BLESSED shall he be who shall take Constantinople,"
said the Prophet. Many desperate fights were fought
and many valiant blows were struck in the endeavor
to earn that promised blessing. Eyub, Mohammed's brave
companion in arms, perished in the first attempt made by the
Arabs to win the capital of the East. The Crusaders took it
and got scant blessings, and did more destruction in one week
than all other conquerors in twelve centuries or thereabouts ;
and at last came a successor and namesake of the Prophet
himself, Mehemet the Fateh, he who of all others is called by
the Turks the Conqueror, to this day. Though the whole
great empire of the first Constantine had dwindled, in the days
of the last of the name, to the narrow limits comprised within
the walls of the city, a war of several years' duration was the
price paid by Mehemet for the few miles of land that lie be
tween Rumeli Hissar and St. Sophia. Impregnable castles had
to be built, vast intrenchments had to be dug, and the invad
ing fleet had to be hauled up high and dry upon the shores of
the Bosphorus and taken overland upon wheels to be launched
again upon the waters of the Golden Horn. And then, at the

very end, the last struggle was the fiercest of all, the last of
the emperors fell fighting desperately on foot at the gate of
his own capital, and the conqueror, riding high upon the heaps
of slain in the south aisle of St. Sophia, smote the pillar near
est to him with his reeking hand and left there his bloody
sign manual, to be a token of his victory even to this day.
So says tradition, at least ; but in these latter days it is even
denied that there was any massacre at all within the walls of
the church, and we are confidently told that the Christians as
sembled therein were taken captive without bloodshed. Yet
we who live in this age of light and progress, when armies are
destroyed by machinery and empires spring up in a night, like
mushrooms, bloom for a day like cabbage-roses, and vanish
on the morrow like smoke, far too unstable to fall under one
simile, we cling with an unconscious love of romance to the
short, sharp, cruel deeds done in those days of faith and pas
sion. We would rather stand in the dim aisle of the great
mosque and believe for a moment that the savage warrior
marked it for his own with Christian blood, than pore for
hours over the elaborate schemes of mobilization which are to
open the chess-play of the next nineteenth century conquest.
In that one impress, if it be genuine, or in the story of it, if it
be but a story, all the romance and history of the East seem
to find one common centre. At the moment when that mark
was made the West met the East and fell before it ; in that
instant, what had been sank back into the deep perspective of
past dreamland and the future began to be present. The last
stronghold of the old empire was stormed by the red-handed
founders of the new, and the Constantinople of Constantine,

of Justinian, and of the Greek emperors, had ceased to be.
The rich jewel of gold and precious stones, set, as it were at
the joining of three silver waters, was wrested by strong hands
from Europe's neck to be the chief light in Asia's crown.
The shadows of the great actors of the past, the ghost of Jus
tinian, the passionate wraith of Theodora, the melancholy
spectre of blind Belisarius, shrank out of sight into those vast
halls and pillared galleries which spread beneath Stamboul,
and the corse of their slaughtered descendant was still bleed
ing from a hundred wounds when the master of their inheri
tance invoked upon himself and his race the blessing prom
ised by the Prophet of Allah, nearly eight hundred years be
fore that day.
It has not often happened in history that a city which has
been the capital of an empire during more than a thousand
years has, within twenty-four hours, become the capital of
another, founded and developed by a race having a totally
different language, a hostile religion and traditions opposed
at every point to those of the vanquished. The change after
Mehemet's conquest must have been as prodigious as it was
sudden, and, on the whole, what took place is greatly to the
credit of the conqueror. From that day to this there has
never, I believe, been anything like a persecution of Chris
tians or Jews in Constantinople. Taking Stamboul, Pera,
and Scutari together, there are probably more Christians in
the capital to-day than Mussulmans, a fact which can only be
attributed to principles of toleration for which the Turks have
not generally received credit. The principal churches were
indeed converted into mosques, and the cross was every-
3

where replaced by the crescent, while the innumerable paint
ings and mosaics representing sacred personages, saints, and
angels were immediately, and in most cases permanently,
hidden from view by a thick coating of whitewash. The rigid
simplicity of the Mohammedan faith substituted in their place
a few names — Allah, Mohammed, Abu Bekr, Hassan, Hossein,
Omar, Osman, and Ali, and every mosque in Stamboul, and
perhaps throughout the Mohammedan world, is decorated
with those eight names magnificently written in Arabic char
acters upon eight shields which are hung around the interior.
But the Turk was not destructive. On the contrary, he took
the Christian Church as his model for his own place of wor
ship, and almost all the Turkish mosques are more or less
direct imitations of St. Sophia.
Much of the romance which clings to Constantinople is
founded, 1 believe, upon this and like facts ; in other words,
upon the immense body of widely varying traditions inherent
in every building and object which has survived the revolu
tions of ages. The church of St. Sophia is the type of one
class, the headless Delphic serpent which stands in the Hippo
drome represents another. It was a strange fatality which
brought by Constantine's hand the pedestal of the Delphic
Tripod to the spot which originally had been settled in obedi
ence to the command of the Delphic oracle ; there is an air of
fatality also about the tradition that the conqueror who came
to give a third name to the capital of the East, struck off the
third head of the serpent with his battle-axe on the day he
entered the city. Certainly but few objects now known to
exist have been more intimately connected with the history of

Entrance to Seraskie-rat Mosque.

the world's earliest civilization than this relic of the Pythoness.
It is headless, but otherwise intact. There it stands in the
midst of the Hippodrome, under the blazing Eastern sun,
seeming to await some new destiny yet to be. Who knows
but that, before another century has run out, strong hands
may take it from its place and set it up and build a temple
over it, and restore its three-fanged heads, even as they were
in the days when Phoebus Apollo was master before the great
Pan died ? Who knows but that another conqueror may be
already born, who shall tear down the shields of Allah, Mo
hammed, and the six Imams, and set up his golden eikons in
their place. For my own part, I would rather not think of
that day if so be that it is already marked upon the future's
calendar. And yet, even though the Osmanli may sink again
some day into the Asiatic darkness from which he came, Con
stantinople, under a new name, perhaps, will still and ever be
the capital of the East, the golden key to Asia, the jewel cov
eted for many crowns, in strife for which the greedy nations
will contend to the very end of time.
The most striking peculiarity of Constantinople is the im
mense vitality which has carried it through so many deaths.
It is common to speak of Turkey as the " sick man," and to
associate ideas of ruin and decay with one of the most in
tensely living cities in the world. But no one who has spent
even twenty-four hours on either side of the Golden Horn
could ever conceive of anything even distantly approaching
to stagnation in the streets of Stamboul, or on Galata Bridge,
or in the busy quarters of Galata itself, or of Pera above.
Coming from Europe, whether from Italy or Austria, one is
7

forcibly struck by the universal life, liveliness, and activity of
the capital. There is no city in the world where so many dif
ferent types of humanity meet and jostle each other and the
stranger at every turn. Every nation in Europe is repre
sented, and every nation of Asia as well. The highest and
lowest types of living humanity pay their penny to the men
in white who take the tolls on Galata Bridge. There is not
even, as there is in so many cosmopolitan capitals, any gen
eral predominant type of feature or color. Of the Turks
themselves it may be doubted whether they should be called a
nation, or an agglomeration of individuals of many races who
find one common bond in Islam. In the first mosque you
enter at haphazard, you may see the pure Turk, often as fair
and flaxen as any Norwegian, prostrating himself and repeat
ing his prayers beside the blackest of black Africans. And as
you enter the sacred place, both, at the self -same moment,
will instinctively glance at your feet to see whether you have
taken off your shoes or have slipped on a dusty pair of the
"babuj" which will generally be offered you at the door.
Among Mohammedans, as among Roman Catholics, the uni
versality of common practices has something imposing in it,
and you instinctively respect the Mohammedan for requiring
you to reverence the spot on which he prays. And here at
the very outset let me say, that after many visits and some
residence in the East I am strongly inclined to believe in the
original Turk — when he is to be found. Greeks, Armenians,
Persians, and Africans have given him a bad name by calling
themselves Turks and sometimes by misgoverning his country,
but he himself is a fine fellow and belongs to the superior,

An Armenian.

dominant races of the world. He is naturally a fair man with
blue eyes and of fresh complexion, well grown, uncommonly
strong, and very enduring. He is sober ; he is clean ; and he
is honest even to his own disadvantage, being by no means a
match for the wily Greeks and Armenians who are perpetu
ally fattening on his heart. There is a common proverb in
the East to the effect that it takes ten Jews to cheat an Ar
menian, and ten Armenians to cheat one Persian. The pure
Turk has no chance against such people— as little chance as
they themselves would have, perhaps, against an average
Hindu. That fact of itself explains the extraordinary mixture
of races to be found in Constantinople. The Turk is easily
cheated, and people congregate from all places in the world to
profit by his simplicity. Anyone who will take the trouble to
watch the streets and bazaars for any length of time, carefully
bearing this point of view in mind, will be convinced of the
truth of the assertion. The country produces little ; its im
ports are not large ; it is but a way -station on the sea-road
between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. If the swarms
of Greeks and Armenians, who infest almost every quarter,
from the highest point of Pera to the remotest corners of
Stamboul in the neighborhood of the Seven Towers and the
Adrianople Gate, do not rob the Turk, upon what then do
they live and fatten and grow rich ?
Have you ever met and known one of them who was
not in pursuit of a "concession," a "grant," or the
ragged end of a monopoly, and does not the Turk ul
timately pay for all these things ? Where are the foundries
and the manufactories, the grain markets and the railways

Galata Biidge from the Cafe.

to support such an enormous number of men engaged in
business ?
There is more on Galata Bridge than appears at first sight.
It is a sort of combination in itself of the Venetian Rialto and
of the Florentine Ponte Vecchio. It is built on floating pon
toons, having a draw in the middle which is only opened in
the night, and it consists practically of three parts — a highway
for foot-passengers and carriages, a narrow street of little
shops and coffee-houses, and a series of steamboat piers. I
have computed roughly that, taking the average of the year,
twenty-eight thousand persons cross Galata Bridge every day,
a calculation which includes, of course, all the passengers for
the Scutari and the Bosphorus ferries who pay toll in order
to reach the steamers. There is a quiet spot unknown to
most Europeans, where one may sit for hours in undisturbed
enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes, and watch the passengers
on the bridge and the arrivals and departures at one of the
piers, besides observing the manners and customs of the Ga
lata Kaikjis and the Hamals who congregate at the landing
east of the bridge on the Galata side. This delightful spot is
the corner of the first coffee-house on the left going toward
Stamboul. It has a large, airy, and perfectly clean room,
with windows on three sides through which the wind blows
perpetually even on the hottest days. Take your seat in the
corner nearest the bridge and nearest to Galata, order your
cup of coffee — " shekerli," with sugar, or "sade" without —
light your cigarette, and begin your observations. The scene
is dazzling and kaleidoscopic in its variety of color and quick

Galata Bridge.

motion. The eye is first struck by the predominance of the
fez. Hundreds of little truncated cones of vivid scarlet dart
hither and thither, passing and repassing each other like a
swarm of vermilion insects, all exactly alike and all at very
nearly the same level. The fez was introduced as the official
head-dress of Turkey by Mahmud II. known as the Reformer,
who took it from the Greeks, and substituted it for the pon
derous turban formerly worn in the army, and by all Gov
ernment officials. It is in itself ugly except for its bright
color, but it is neat, uniform, and clean, and with its long
black silk tassel lends a sort of " dashing " look to the bronzed
faces of officers and soldiers. But there are turbans, too, and,
plenty of them, both white and green, and many of the
poorer sort, such as porters, water-carriers, and sweetmeat
sellers, twist a white or red rag round the fez to emphasize
the fact that they are Mussulmans. The white and green
turbans are distinctive of the Mollahs — men who have re
ceived the education of Mohammedan priests, though they
may not necessarily exercise priestly functions. They, too,
wear the Turkish dress, the flowing, tight-sleeved, scanty-cut
gown of almost any color except red, open in front and dis
closing the spotless shirt, the embroidered vest, the wide trou
sers, and the voluminous waistband. But European dress is
the rule and not the exception. The military uniforms are
close imitations of those in use in the German army, and the
garments of the civilians are less perfect copies of what is
considered fashionable in western Europe. The Mollah
strides along with dignified step and graceful movement, con
scious, no doubt, of the artistic superiority of his own clothes.
15

A Fruit Seller.
If he has a green turban he is a descendant of the Prophet's
own family, which, like that promised to Abraham of old, has
become like the sands of the sea. In the great majority of
16

cases, too, the claim to such high descent is genuine, the green
badge being handed down from father to son without much
possibility of its being assumed by one who has no claim to
it, unless he be an emigrant from his own birthplace. The
women of the family also wear some bit of green silk or other
stuff in their own homes, though rarely in the street, unless
it be hidden beneath the yashmak or the ferajeh— the clum
sily cut overgarment which covers all women in the street
from the throat to the inevitable patent leather shoes. But
the yashmak is not what it was ten years ago, and has almost
ceased to hide the face at all. Strict as the Sultan's ordi
nance is, there is not the slightest pretence of obeying it, and
in the great majority of cases a thin white veil barely covers
the forehead, and is but loosely drawn together under the
chin. The cross-band which used to cover the nose above
the eyes has entirely disappeared, or is worn only when ladies
appear in public at such places as the Sweet Waters, or in
their kaiks on the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. It must
be admitted that with the disuse of that old-fashioned veil, a
great illusion has disappeared from the streets of Constanti
nople. There was something very mysterious about it.
Black eyes never looked so black and deep and liquid as
when seen by themselves, as it were, between two broad
bands of opaque white. In those days every yashmak veiled
an ideal beauty, very different from the ugliness of the pale
and flaccid features which its absence now generally dis
closes. One is inclined to doubt whether the mirror is in
common use in the harem of to-day.
But as you sit by the open window of the coffee-house,
17

you have little time for analyzing the features or the dress of
the hurrying crowd. What you see is a magnificent, inex
tricable confusion of moving light and sun and shade
and color, a wild
and almost dream
like confusion of
Eastern and West
ern life, a startling
and almost horrible
contrast of mag
nificence and squal
or ; the splendid,
gold - lace - bediz -
ened adjutant on
his Arab mare and
the almost incon
ceivably wretched
beggar, maimed
and blind, perhaps,
holding out his
hand with his per
petual feeble cry,
" On para," a pen
ny; the solemn
scion of the Proph
et's race, green-
turbaned, stately,
calm; the deadly
A Street Water-carrier. pale indifferent

Turkish woman all in white and black, and closely followed
by a bright-eyed African girl even less closely veiled than her
mistress ; the sanctimonious Dervish in soft brown, or softer
green, or steely gray, his bent head and downcast eyes sur
mounted by his tall cylindrical felt cap ; the little strutting
military cadet in smart uniform and brand-new fez, not more
than twelve years old, perhaps, and closely followed by a scowl
ing African servant who cuffs him sharply, without the slightest
sign of respect, if he wanders to the right or to the left. Then,
suddenly, the rumble and clatter of a splendid equipage rolling
fast through the dividing crowd, bearing, it may be, some
solemn, frock-coated, white-bearded, scarlet-fezzed minister of
state, on his way to Selamlik, or from Yildiz Kiosk to the Sub
lime Porte — or else, if the carriage be a closed brougham, and
if there be outriders, some delicate, pale-faced, half-consump
tive prince, one of the innumerable offshoots of the Imperial
family. And it all surges back and forth, gleaming, glistening,
and flashing, under the broad white sun against the background
of blue water and pale sky and faintly outlined hills, poured
out as a stream of liquid metal when the furnace is opened,
and rushing, iridescent and sparkling, toward the mould, fasci
nating, inthralling, almost hypnotic in its effect upon the senses.
Even the fat and flabby Greek, who sits not far from you
upon the leathern bench, can hardly keep his eyes from the
sight, although it has been familiar to him since he was a
baby. He is a cook and has bilious-looking eyes. You know
that he is a cook, because he is smoking a water-pipe which,
as everyone who frequents the coffee-houses in Constanti
nople is aware, is a form of enjoyment favored almost exclu-
19

sively by the members of his profession. But even the bub
bling of the water-pipe, and the constant efforts of keeping
its little fire alive, cannot distract your neighbor's unhealthy
yellow eyes from the inthralling spectacle of Galata Bridge
at noon-day. There is nothing like it in the whole world,
from San Francisco to Peking — nothing so vivid, so alive, so
heterogeneous, so anomalous, and so fascinating. The imag
ination reels at the merest attempt to fix the characteristics or
guess at the lives, to evoke the poetry, the prose, or the ro
mance, of half a score among the countless individualities
that cross the field of vision at every second, streaming back
ward and forward like swarms of bees between the two great
hives of humanity thus linked and bound together by a single
narrow causeway.
I shall never forget my first impression of Constantinople.
It has been my good fortune since then, to see it again and
again, at every time of year, and under every possible aspect,
but no subsequent picture has had either the vividness or the
beauty of the first. I remember that it was in February and
we steamed up the Sea of Marmora to the entrance of the
Bosphorus in a heavy snow-storm. The flakes fell so thick
and fast that scarcely a single building was distinctly visible.
Then, suddenly, just when we were opposite St. Sophia, the
snow ceased to fall, the clouds parted in a bright blue rent,
and the clear morning sun, rising behind us, shone full upon
Stamboul. It was a marvellous sight. Every dome and min
aret and tower was frosted with thick silver. It was as though
the whole beautiful city were moulded in precious metal finely

A Water-Carrier.

chiselled and richly chased. The slender minarets shot up
like rays of light, the dark cypresses were changed to silver
plumes, even the Seven Towers, far on the western wall, were
as white as Parian marble. Only the sea had color. A mo
ment earlier it had been gray and dull as weather-beaten lead,
but under the touch of the Eastern sun it flashed all at once
to a deep opaque blue, more like lapis lazuli than sapphire.
The glory of the scene was beyond description, and, in its
way, surpasses anything I have witnessed in any part of the
world. A few minutes later it was gone, the wintry clouds
rolled together, the light went out, snow fell again, then rain,
and then more snow, and my second impression was of dis
mal, slushy, filthy streets, dripping eaves, marrow-biting air,
and an intense longing for a comfortable room and a good
fire. Perhaps the contrast has served in memory's gallery to
throw the first picture into unreasonable prominence, but re
membrance may have exaggerations which one does not
regret. And now, quite recently, I have seen the picture in another
and very different light. I was belated in Kadi Keui on a
summer evening, and being obliged to get back to Pera for
the night I took a four-oared kaik. The moon was near the
first quarter and shone brightly, though the weather to the
northward was threatening, and there was a sharp, cool
breeze over the water. Very slowly, as we made our way
across, the black cloud-bank crept up to the moon until, just
as we were opposite Top Kapu, the thunder-storm broke on
us in full force. In an instant the night was as black as ink,
and I could see nothing ahead but the dim lights of the bridge
23

and the white foam of the driving squall. Astern and to star
board the red light on the so-called Leander's Tower served
to guide the oarsmen as they pulled along through the big
drops of rain. Then the lightning began. At intervals of a
few seconds, vivid flashes lit up both cities, Pera and Stam
boul, so brightly that even at a great distance I could dis
tinctly see the windows of the houses, the details of the archi
tecture, and even the little low doors high up at the tops of
the minarets. It was as though at each separate moment the
whole city were enveloped in flames, instantly extinguished
and as suddenly rekindled.
But perhaps the most characteristic view of all, and the
most permanently abiding is that of Stamboul in summer
when the strong, unwavering light fills every lane and alley
and corner from sunrise to sunset, drinking up the shadows
as heat dries moisture. Then behind the gilded gratings of
Sultan Ahmed's lovely fountain the watermen are ever busy
filling the little metal cups from the cool cistern for the
thirsty faithful and faithless alike. Then, in the bright shade
that is like the sunshine of other cities, the wretched street
dogs forget to fight, and lie panting in the heat, trusting that
each passer-by may be a merciful Turk, who will step aside
rather than disturb them, and not a Greek or an Armenian,
who will kick them half across the street rather than go a
yard out of his way. Then it is pleasant to wander through
the halls and passages of the Top Kapu Serai — in English, the
" Cannon Gate Palace " — to spend half an hour in the ex
quisite little library dreaming over the marvellous portraits of
the Sultans, if you are lucky enough to be trusted with the
24

precious parchment pages. Mehemet the Conqueror, Bayezid
the Mystic, Suleiman the Magnificent, Ahmed First — he of
the six minarets — Mahmud the Reformer, the Slayer of the
Janissaries, the introducer of the fez — -these and many others
have all lived and moved and had their being within the walls
of the great rambling old palace, men of many strange and
divers passions and ambitions, some of them voluptuous in
their tastes beyond a Roman Emperor's dream of luxury,
others warlike, simple, and severe, some merciful, some blood
thirsty, all despotic in theory, in fact, or in both. Here are
their portraits as they looked in their rich and varied mag
nificence, turbaned, jewelled, and armed, fierce-looking men
most of them, even when there is a trace of effeminacy in
their features, for the Sultan is not only the Padishah — The
King of Kings — but also the Hunkyar, the " Man Slayer."
And at the entrance to the palace, between the gates, there is
a dismal little room where the slaying used to be done, where
many a Pasha, many a Vizier, and many a Minister of State
has felt the tough bow-string quietly tightening round his
throat, when a few moments earlier he had dreamed of favor
and of power. Down by the water's edge, too, there is a lit
tle gate about which many stories are told, legendary, per
haps, and certainly not so surely true as the historical facts
connected with the Jellad Odasi — the gloomy little room —
under Orta Kapu. Tradition says that through that narrow
water-gate more than one rebellious beauty of the harem was
carried out, sewn in a weighted sack, that her soul might ex
piate her follies and her body feed the fish of the Bosphorus.
If you have a Greek guide, he will assure you, with every
25

appearance of believing the story himself, that it was the cus
tom of the earlier Sultans to torture rich Greeks into confess
ing the whereabouts of their hidden treasures, and then to
consign their mangled remains to the sea by that same gate —
a story which finds no corroboration whatever in the charters
granted to Christians by the Sultans, and very little, if any,
in history as told by the Christians themselves. But as for
the ladies of the harem, we know very little about them,
though their shadowy eyes and snowy yashmaks seem to pur
sue us in the still warm air through that vast deserted dwell
ing — and there are no portraits of them among .the illumi
nated parchment leaves in the quiet library.
There is nothing dull or commonplace about shopping or
shopkeeping in the East. Every man's shop is much more
literally his stronghold than the Englishman's house is his
castle, and every customer's appearance is the signal for a
siege. The unconscionable length of time necessary to de
velop a bargain in Turkey accounts, perhaps, for the perpet
ual crowd in the bazaar. Whoever wishes to buy anything
of which the price is not commonly known and fixed by cus
tom, must return many times to the assault before he gets
what he wants. The consequence is that where every cus
tomer comes four times instead of once to the shop where he
has business, there are four times as many people in the tort
uous passages and labyrinthine ways of the bazaar, as should
legitimately correspond to the amount of business actually
done. The process is certainly cumbrous. When you first
see the object for which you are looking you must be blind,
26

More than one rebellious beauty of the harem was carried out, sewn in a weighted sack.

27

not let your features betray by the least expression that you
are interested. Next, you should ask the price of at least one
hundred articles in the shop, being careful, however, not to
omit the one you need, lest the omission should make the
shopkeeper suspect that you want it. You will then send for
coffee and say that you have not come to buy anything, but
have merely made inquiries out of curiosity. A few days
later come, and again ask the prices of several things. On
your third visit you may allow yourself to look more closely
at what you have long since mentally selected, and to offer
the shopkeeper not more than one-third of what he asks.
On the fourth day prepare for a final pitched battle. If you
do not look unrighteously rich and have not the appearance of
being a " tender-foot," you may consider that you have done
fairly well if you pay in the end about two-thirds of what
was demanded, especially if you have dealt with a Turk or a
Jew, avoiding anything like a Christian as you would shun
the plague. But this roundabout process has compensations
after all so real as to be almost attractions in themselves.
Everything is mysterious in the bazaar and much is beautiful.
A walled city within a walled city, and again an almost im
pregnable fortress within that, cut up in all directions by nar
row passages, blind alleys and crossways, the whole being
vaulted and roofed, and entirely lighted by countless little
domes — a labyrinth Cretan in its complications, and puzzling
even to those who inhabit it, crowded by a busy, jostling,
motley multitude drawn together from all quarters of the
globe, and filled in all its recesses to very overflowing with
every production of Western civilization and Eastern art, per-

Boat-houses on the Golden Horn.

vaded throughout its enormous extent by the strange smell of
the East, so dear to strangers and so hateful to the exiled
European — rich in everything, in life and sound and gorgeous
color — the " charshi " of Stamboul stands alone in the whole
world as the product of three continents, Europe, Asia, and
Africa, fused at one busy, central, seething point.
The centre of centres, the safe deposit, the stronghold of
the Constantinople merchant, is Bezestan the " Armorer's
market." The wealth in this inner sanctum is said to be
enormous — coin, precious stones, jewels of all sorts, silken
carpets, rich embroideries, gold, weapons, and treasures of
Oriental art of every sort, are deposited here in what must
seem to an ordinary European a very casual way, in deal
boxes more or less strengthened with iron and furnished with
by no means burglar-proof locks. And yet nothing is ever
stolen from Bezestan. It has heavy gates of its own ; it is
opened late and closed early, and the merchants and other
depositors employ numerous watchmen by night and day,
according to a system which is primeval in the East, and to
which the West is rapidly approaching. After expending its
ingenuity for centuries upon the construction of ingenious
locks and bolts and bars, Europe is beginning to understand
that approximate safety is only to be found in "employing
plenty of light and a reliable watchman.
It would be hopeless to attempt anything like a description
of the merchandise and antiquities here accumulated for sale.
Such a catalogue would fill a hundred volumes, in a place
where hardly any two objects are alike. What strikes one is
the enormous product of Eastern manual labor, its variety
3°

'Wj-.u , If' f,\l

Sweet Waters of Asia. — Bosphorus.

and its artistic beauty, and those facts are more familiar in
the West than they were twenty years ago, when no average
cultivated person could tell by inspection whether a carpet
were a Giordes or a Smyrna. But one is tempted to ask
whether the world would not be richer and far more beautiful
if the countless eyes that pore over " miserable books " and
the innumerable fingers whose cherished occupation is to look
as though they had none, were employed in producing some
thing useful and yet not machine-made.
Constantinople owes much to the matchless beauty of the
three waters which run together beneath its walls, and much
of their reputation again has become world-wide by the kaik.
It is disputed and disputable whether the Turks copied the
Venetian gondola or whether the Venetians imitated the Turk
ish kaik, but the resemblance between them is so strong as to
make it certain that they have a common origin. Take from
the gondola the " felse," or hood, and the rostrated stem, and
the remainder is practically the kaik. It is of all craft of its
size the swiftest, the most easy to handle, and the most com
fortable, and the Turks are generally admitted to be the best
oarsmen in Europe. Indeed, they have need to be, for both
the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn are crowded with craft
of every kind, and made dangerous by the swiftest of cur
rents. The distances too are very great, and such as no ordi
nary oarsman would undertake for pleasure or for the sake
of exercise. It is no joke to pull fifteen or sixteen miles
against a stream which in some places runs four or five knots
an hour. 3^

Sweet Waters of Europe,

The foreigner avoids the kaik when he is alone, because he
cannot bargain, and because the only alternative is the society
and unceasing chatter of the tormenting guide. But he loses
much. It is well worth while to lie back among the cushions
opposite the silent oarsmen with no companion but a ciga
rette, and to be pulled swiftly up the Golden Horn on a Fri
day afternoon in summer, choosing the hour so that the sun
shall be behind the hill just as the kaik sweeps into the broad
lagoon beyond the Arsenal. The river broadens and narrows
suddenly again and again, streaked with light and shade, and
the reflections of the soft green hills, shot with the ripples and
wake of small light craft, dotted brilliantly with color, the
bright red fez, the full and snowy shirt of the kaikja, the rich
hues of dark velvets trailing over the stern of a private boat
here and there among the rest. Now, as the water widens,,
there is room for all and they spread like a fan, hastening to
be the first at the narrows beyond ; and then you are in the
throng again, wondering at the boatmen's matchless skill and
sometimes at their marvellous good temper. Then under
pretty wooden bridges, between low river banks carpeted with
turf. Trees grow in little thickset plantations, and in each
tiny grove the coffee-seller has his small furnace of live coals,
his water-jar and his array of spotless cups. There, in the
deep, cool shade, whole families spend the afternoon at rest,
the women and children seated together upon the grass, their
ferajehs drawn closely round them and their yashmaks care
lessly draped around their faces, while the men are grouped
by themselves a little apart. As you near the Imperial villa
trees grow more closely together and the people are more
35

numerous ; Egyptian fiddlers and flute -players fill the evening
air with strange Arab melodies, often harsh, sometimes tune
ful, but always melancholy. The people talk little among
themselves, and everywhere the voice of the ice-cream vendor
rises loudly above other sounds — dondurma kaimak — frozen
cream ! A little higher the trees are larger still, the crowd is
greater. Carriages of all sorts, from the most brilliant equi
page to the humblest country cart, are drawn up in long rows.
There are booths and tents — you may eat broiled mutton
collops with sour cream, or simple ices, or you may drink
sherbet and coffee, and everyone smokes the inevitable, the
eternal, the universal cigarette.
And here by the Sweet Waters of Europe, in the pleasant
shade and by the cool, flowing water, I will leave you for a
space to breathe the gentle Eastern air, to dream out your
dream of romance until the shadows deepen to purple, and
the silent kaiks drop away down the stream, or if you feel
commercially inclined, and have spent your day in the bazaar,
to lay deep schemes for the circumvention of Isaac, or Moses,
or my dear old friend Marchetto, or of Osman Bey, the hon
est Turk, in the purchase of the ideal Persian carpet.

36

II

BEYOND the limits of the business quarter and the
neighborhood of the public offices and ministerial
buildings, Constantinople is one of the quietest cities
in the world. The Turk's home life seems mysterious to the
European, though there is much less real secrecy about it than
might be supposed. In the East, as elsewhere, the house-
servants gather to
gether, gossip, and
tell each other what
their masters have for
dinner, how often
their mistresses dye
their hair with henna,
lose their tempers,
and get into debt in
the bazaar. But
though all these things
go on, as they do
wherever human be
ings are gathered to
gether, the closed
dOOrS and latticed On a Steamer-Golden Horn.

37

windows of the long narrow streets present an impenetrable
front. As one leaves the centre of business, going west
ward, there are fewer women to be seen, and the veils,
strange to say, are more closely drawn about the face. The
great Turkish quarter stretches through the midst of the
city in the direction of the Adrianople Gate and the Kahriye
Mosque. The houses are mostly but two stories high, and in
every stage of preservation. A solid brick or stone dwelling
with projecting balconies, dazzlingly whitewashed and immac
ulate as to its doorstep, is followed by a tumble-down wooden
cottage so distorted by the yielding of its timbers in all direc
tions as to disturb an ordinary man's theories of possible
stability. Next, perhaps, comes a low, open shed, kept by a
cobbler, a small tailor, or a coffee-seller. Beyond that, the
rusty grating of a public fountain or a tiny burial-ground not
five yards square, the tall, weather-beaten head-stones leaning
and lying in all directions like jack-straws. Then more
dwelling's, straight or crooked, a little mosque, another coffee-
shop, a cross street and two or three sturdy horses held by
skinny boys to be hired as cabs are in other cities. And so
on, through many varieties of the same view, over the exe
crable pavement, up and down hill, until you reach the neigh
borhood of the walls, along which a considerable part of the
land rises abruptly like an embankment to the level of the
gates and the open fields without.
Everyone who goes to Constantinople visits the Kahriye
Mosque, once known in Greek as the " Country Hermitage,"
a small but very ancient church, richly adorned with paintings
and mosaics. The Mollah in charge is an enlightened Turk
38

\i

A Glimpse of St. Sophia.

of the purest breed, with yellow hair, blue eyes, and fresh
complexion — and a descendant of the Prophet, too, for he
wears a green turban. He also speaks a little French, and is
quite as much interested in the archaeology of his mosque as
you can be. It is in a great measure due to him that so
much whitewash has been removed from its walls, and that
the building itself is kept constantly in repair.
At the top of the aforesaid embankment there is a little
coffee-house just built, and commanding a view of the city
very different from most others. One is surprised by the
totally new aspect of Constantinople as seen from this side ;
whereas from the Bosphorus one sees little except the archi
tectural outlines of the mosques, interspersed here and there
with a little green, or shadowed by the tall plumes of dark
cypresses : from this end of the city there appear to be on the
whole more trees than houses. The fresh verdure crops up
everywhere amid brown roofs. Below and on the left there
is a glimpse of the Golden Horn. At your feet, in the hol
low, lies the famous little mosque with its three cypresses, and
the great buildings about the Seraskierat and St. Sophia are
but shadowy outlines in the hazy distance.
This part of the city is thinly populated, and it has an
almost desolate look. As the ground rises, the houses are
fewer, and there are many irregular open spaces, covered
with thin grass in spring, deep in dust in summer, and in win
ter deeper still with mud. And all along this side, from the
Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmora, runs the great barrier of
turreted walls which baffled Eyub, who lies buried where he
fell, and which at the end made such long and brave resist -
4'

ance to Mehemet the Conqueror. Nearest the sea lies the
fortress he built, Yedi Kule, the Seven Towers. The vast
ruin with its great court, its numer
ous towers and gates and ramparts,
has become in the course of events
the habitation of a nondescript Ar
menian cobbler.
After having been
successively the
stronghold of the
city, and the pris
on in which, by a
rather liberal in
terpretation of the
law of nations, the
Sultans confined
the Ambassadors
of the countries
against which
they declared war
— it was afterward used as a school and is now a mere ruin.
The last time I was there I was wandering idly through the
outer gate intending, as usual, to peer between the stones
into the so-called Well of Blood, into which the aforesaid
Armenian cobbler declares that the heads of a number of
Janissaries were thrown when Mahmud the Reformer de
stroyed the corps. The well is deep and black, and there
is water in it, and probably no bones at all by this time. In
passing through the gate I stumbled against a stone which lay
42

View from Eyub Looking Over the Golden Horn.

in the way under the arch. It was a bit of the head-stone
of a woman's grave, as was clear from the carved sunflower,
for men's graves have a turban or a fez, according to the
epoch. Below the flower a part of the inscription was still
legible — the dedication to God, "the ever abiding One " —
and below that, in Turkish, the words: "I have come to
the garden of this world, but have found no kindness."
More had followed, but the stone was broken off at that
place. There was an odd pathos and pity about it, as though
the unhappy woman, whoever she had been, buried long ago
outside the walls, had come back, knocking once more at the
gate of the " garden of this world," asking for a little of that
kindness of which she had found none in life. It was all
very lonely and desolate, the high sun beating down upon the
withered shrubs and bushes and dusty paths of the garden
which had once flowered in the court, and blazing more
fiercely still upon the deserted hillock, the ruined mosque, and
the mouth of the Well of Blood outside the open gate, and
there, in the shadow of the arch between, the ghost of the
Turkish woman asking for kindness and finding none.
In order to form any idea of the extent of the fortress one
should climb at least one of the towers, though the view from
the ramparts hardly repays the trouble. But the towers
themselves are vast and gloomy places, some of them filled
with wooden lofts, to be reached only by movable ladders,
and formerly used as sleeping-places for soldiers. The wind
ing stone stairs are so dark that the Armenian cobbler brings
a lantern to show you the way. There were prisons below
and prisons high up, prisons with windows and prisons with-
43

out. The last French ambassador who was locked up here,
when war was declared between Turkey and France in 1 798,
was Ruffin, and the room which is shown as his is dimly
lighted by a single grated window, less than two feet square,
and at such a height from the floor that only a tall man can
look out through it. It must be confessed that there was
something imposing in the simple and straightforward disre
gard of the law of nations shown in imprisoning the ambas
sadors of foreign powers. Upon the tiled roofs of the tow
ers the wind-blown dust has accumulated in the course of
half a century or more, and the shrubs and bushes flourish
abundantly. The cobbler says that the ghosts of the executed
excellencies whose heads were formerly set up on the edge of
the ramparts, as they were on Temple Bar, wander at night
in this hanging garden.
As in most Oriental cities, there are two distinct modes of
existence in Constantinople — the out-door life and the in-door
life. The majority of Turks leave their homes in the morn
ing and return late in the afternoon when their work is done.
During the day they live out-of-doors or in the bazaars, but
so soon as the Turk has completed his business he goes home,
and if you ask for him you will be told that he is in the
harem and not to be disturbed ; and, as a rule, his servants will
refuse even to inform him of your presence. If it is indis
pensable that you should see him, you may await his pleasure
in the selamlik, the room for receiving male guests, which
is to be found in every Turkish house, and beyond which are
the mysterious regions of the harem. " Harem," in the mod-
44

ern acceptation of the word, merely means the private apart
ments, and these would be called by the same name even in a
bachelors' establishment inhabited solely by men, but gener
ally it is applied to every place intended for women. The
end of the Turkish railway carriage, curtained off from the
rest, is harem ; so is the ladies' cabin on board ship, and the
latticed gallery in a mosque. In the dwelling-house it is all
that quarter inhabited by the wife and children and other la
dies of the family ; and here I may say, in passing, that very
few Turks nowadays have more than one wife, though the
Koran allows every man four at a time, and encourages a
constant change by facilitating divorce. The traditional
Turk with his innumerable women no longer exists, except as
a very rare exception, but the Mussulman has not sacrificed
the advantages of the privacy granted him by the Mohamme
dan law and custom. Whatever exists or goes on behind the
doors leading out of the selamlik belongs to his private life,
and no one with any knowledge of Eastern manners would
think of even suggesting the existence of women in the house.
His life when away from home during the day is passed ex
clusively among men, and he does not even like to be seen in
the company of any female member of his household. I
have once or twice seen a Turk driving with a veiled lady, far
in the country on the Asian side, but never in Stamboul.
During the busy hours of the day the Turk lives out-of-doors,
in the streets, under the trees in the open squares, and in the
shops of the bazaar eating, drinking, taking his coffee, and
smoking, wherever it best suits his convenience. The conse
quence is that the busy part of the city is full of eating-houses
45

Street Fountain at Stamboul,

and coffee-shops, and there is no end to the itinerant venders
of food and drink who carry their wicker stands up and down
in the crowd. There is the man who sells bread and " pide "
and " peksemit " — unleavened bread and biscuits ; there is
the cheese-monger who has a round wicker basket and one or
two kinds of cheese and " yoord," or Turkish curds ; there is
the cook who sells kebaby — little morsels of lamb or mutton
broiled on wooden skewers, and pilaf, kept hot in a big closed
tin, or stuffed spring squashes and other vegetables ; not to
mention the sweet-meat-sellers, the custard-makers, and the
sellers of sherbet. Most numerous of all are the water-car
riers. They generally have a cylindrical vessel strapped on
their shoulders and closely covered with green boughs to pro
tect the water from the sun ; in one hand they hold the end
of a flexible tube with a polished brass faucet, and in the other
they carry two or three heavy glasses, with which, by a skil
ful movement of the fingers, they play a perpetual tune which
gives notice of their whereabouts. Coming from Italy one is
forcibly struck by the extreme cleanliness of all these peddlers
of food and drink, and by the highly appetizing appearance
of what they have to sell. But besides these, there are a cer
tain number of kitchens and restaurants in the bazaar. In
particular, there is a fat and rosy Turk who makes the best
kebaby in the world, and whose little place is in a small court
close to one of the thoroughfares. On the clean marble slab
which forms the sill of the window, the rows of wooden
skewers lie ready for use, pilaf heaped up in large dishes
steams by the well-kept fire, and a couple of clean, handy
boys wait upon the customers, who sit at a little table at the
47

back of the kitchen or out of doors in the quiet court before
it. The composition of the favorite dish must sound extraor
dinary to Eu
ropean ears.
"Pide," or un
leavened bread,
is cut into
squares and
laid in the bot
tom of a soup-
plate. Upon
this curded
cream is poured
to the thick
ness of two
fingers. Upon
this, again, lit
tle squares of
meat hot from
the fire are
heaped up, and
the whole is
seasoned with
salt, pepper,
cardamom, and
sumach. It is
exceedinglygood and, what
is more, very
48

Ice-cream Seller.

digestible, as those travellers will know who have been ac
customed in Russia to eating sour cream with everything.
Nor is the pilaf to be despised, though it would take long
to describe the proper mode of preparing it, and to explain
the differences between the four great pilafs of the world
—the Turkish, the Greek, the Persian, and the East Indian,
of which the Persian is, in my opinion, by far the best.
The cook provides you with food, but not with drink, and if
you require the latter you must hail the passing waterman and
buy a glass of water or sherbet. Civilization, however, is far
advanced in Constantinople, where every customer expects a
knife and fork with his food, and uses them both. In Persia
he would be given a piece of unleavened cake, which he
would have to supplement with his fingers. For my own
part, it has always struck me that fingers should be consid
ered as much more appropriate instruments for feeding than
forks. I know that they are my own fingers and that I have
washed them, but as for the forks in places of public enter
tainment, 1 am not sure that they have been washed at all,
and I would much rather not think of the way in which they
have been used. We would rather suffer much than use an
other man's toothbrush, but we think nothing at all of using
the whole world's fork — a fact which proves the vanity of
most outward refinements.
But everything which the Turk consumes in the Bazaar is
in the nature of luncheon, his principal meal being always
taken at home and after sunset. In a dark corner of Bezes
tan there stands a little mosque with a small minaret, of which
the pointed spire springs up like that of a toy house toward
49

the high vault of the roof overhead. At midday, as at the
other hours of prayer while the Bazaar is open, the muezzin
climbs the tall tower and calls the faithful from the window
above with as much zeal as though he were crying the sum
mons from the highest pinnacle of Sultan Ahmed. But
though it be midday there is no general movement among
the crowd, as there would be in Southern Christian countries
at the dinner hour. For the Turk, when away from home, is
nomadic and indifferent to regular meals, whereas the evening
dinner or supper at home is a patriarchal institution treated with
due importance and solemnity. There are Turkish families
still in which a table is set in the selamlik, and is literally open
every day to all comers, rich and poor. Anyone may enter, and
he will be shown to a place at the master's table if he be of the
master's class, or at another, lower down the hall, if he be an
inferior. And in Turkey, to dine means also to spend the night,
the entertainer being expected to furnish his guests with beds,
slippers, and sleeping garments. Of course the ladies of the
establishment do not appear, but are served separately in the
harem. The chief butler of a friend of mine was recently heard
to complain bitterly that the guests often rose very early in the
morning and carried away the shirts and slippers provided them
for the night — a poor return for such open-handed hospital
ity. It must be said that Turkish dinners do not as a rule last
a long time. They consist indeed of a very great number of
dishes, but these are offered but once to each guest and re
moved with incredible rapidity by the servants.
The street which runs from the Post-office to Nur-i-Os-
5°

Street Scene in Stamboul— Cafe' Frequented by Greeks.

maniye is one of the most characteristic of Constantinople,
for it forms the principal thoroughfare between Galata Bridge
and the Bazaar. It is a nondescript and cosmopolitan street,
crowded with shops and offices of every trade and every na
tion. It is a favorite neighborhood for Greek and Armenian
dentists, the assurances of whose skill are expressed in enor
mous signs. There too, in the neighborhood of the Post-
office itself, the public scribes sit all day long in the shade,
grave and impassive as sphinxes, and ready to lend their skill
with the pen for the correspondence of the unlettered. Their
customers are chiefly Turkish women, who generally veil
themselves more closely than usual while dictating in low and
confidential tones the messages they themselves are unable to
write. The system is familiar enough in Italy and Greece, as
well as in most Eastern countries ; but it is worth while to
linger a moment and catch a glimpse of some of those faces
as they bend eagerly over the scribe's table, watching the
swiftly moving reed pen. For Turkish is written with reeds,
and the inkstand is a little sponge. Near this spot is the Yeni
Jami, one of the beautiful mosques of Stamboul, frequented
at all hours by a motley crowd of worshippers. Leave be
hind you the glare, the hurry, and the rush of the thronged
street, thrust your feet into the wide slippers at the door, and
enter the beautiful building at the hour of prayer. The con
trast is sudden, solemn, and grand, and something of the
deep mystery of Oriental life is all at once made clear to you.
In the cool shadows Mussulmans of all ages are prostrating
themselves before the Mihrab — the small shrine which in
every mosque shows the exact direction of Mecca — or before
53

the sacred writings in other parts of the wall. There is pro
found belief and devotion in their attitudes, gestures, and ac
cents, a belief as superior to the idolatrous superstition of the
far East as it is beyond the conviction of the ordinary Chris
tian in simplicity and sincerity. It is indeed impossible to
spend much time among Mussulmans without acquiring the
certainty that they are profoundly in earnest in religious mat
ters, and that the unfurling of the Standard of the Prophet
which is occasionally hinted at as a vague possibility, would
be productive of results not dreamed of in the philosophy of
Europe. Of all places in the world, Constantinople is interesting by
the strong contrasts which it presents at every turn, and this
sudden change from the brilliant animation of the streets to
the solemn quiet of the mosques and tombs is one of the
most striking. The marvellous richness of decoration in the
interior of many of the Jamis brings to the surface the deeper
side of Oriental character. As in most Eastern countries,
some of the highest developments of art are brought into close
contact with the most tasteless constructions and hideous or
naments. The magnificence, in virtue of which the epithet
gorgeous is so frequently applied to the East, is often thrown
into even stronger relief by the proximity of a certain squalid
tawdriness extremely offensive to European taste. But here,
as in Europe, the arts are intimately dependent upon religion
and upon religious ideas. The Mussulmans of the Sunnite
sect, who do not permit the representation of anything
that has breath, have devoted an amount of attention to the
art of writing equal to that which has been bestowed upon
54

painting in the West. To the cultured Turk a piece of beau
tiful caligraphy affords as much artistic delight as we could
find in the pictures of the greatest masters. The European
may in time familiarize himself with the Arabic character —
which is a sort of shorthand — so as to read it as readily as
the Latin or the Gothic. But he can never, I believe, learn
to distinguish the artistic values therein which correspond to
our ideas of drawing, color, light, and shade. A Turk the
other day pointed out to me a text from the Koran which
hung upon his wall written in plain black upon a white
ground. " That writing," he said, " gives me as much aes
thetic pleasure as you could find in any Titian." Such speci
mens of caligraphic skill are often richly framed and pre
served under glass, but some of the most beautiful of them
all are found in the glazed tiles used in ornamenting the
mosques and tombs. Some of these inscriptions are posi
tively priceless in the eyes of the Turks, and they are rapidly
becoming so in the eyes of the European collector, who, how
ever, finds it almost impossible to obtain the smallest specimen
of them. For it is always in connection with religion, and
generally in places of worship, that the best objects are found.
But art in the East is rapidly decaying, and the secret of pro
ducing the wonderful tiles, of which so many thousands are
still to be seen, is lost forever, while the manufacture of cheap
and inferior imitations is altogether in the hands of the Jews
in the Bazaar.
In all legends and traditions of the East, the Arab horse
plays an important part, and when I first visited the horse
55

market in Stamboul, I had anticipatory visions of thorough
breds which would have delighted the hearts of Lady Anne
Blunt and her husband. The disappointment was as com
plete as any I have ever suffered. The At-Bazaar is on the
east side of the mosque of Mehemet II. the Conqueror. It
would have been impossible to choose a worse place for the
purpose of showing off horses, were there any to be shown,
than the three-cornered open space, irregularly paved with
cobble-stones of all sizes, on the steep incline of a little hill.
This yard is surrounded by a number of wretched wooden
houses, most of which contain a dark and ill-ventilated stable,
where the few horses for sale by the various owners are kept
— and ill-kept — in ordinary stalls. Two or three unwieldy
Hungarian brutes and a dozen or so of stout little Saloniki
cobs are the usual occupants, and 1 once found amongst them
a monstrous form of horse-flesh which recalled the legends of
Hereward's ugly mare and of the animal which the devil lent
the exciseman in the " Ingoldsby Legends." As to his legs,
he was fully eighteen hands high, but his body was no longer
than that of one of the aforesaid Saloniki ponies. His head re
minded me of nothing so much as of a certain ancient leathern
hat-box, a sort of heirloom in my possession, weather-beaten
under many skies and jaded in many express trains, hall
marked all over with a whole geographical dictionary of
names of cities printed on scraps of paper of every possible
hue. There was something so strangely unnatural about the
animal's whole appearance that my attention was riveted by
him for many minutes, and my guide, the splendid old Turk
who is the chief of the horse-dealers, looked at me curiously
56

Court of the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid.

as though suspecting that I meant to buy him. I was shown
one animal, at last, well worth seeing and buying. He was
led out from the depths of a gloomy den, which would have
asphyxiated a Western horse, and received a very perfunc
tory grooming at the hands of one of the stable-men. But a
more perfect Arab it would be hard to find out of Arabia.
There were all the points 1 had dreamed of before visiting the
At-Bazaar — the straight tapering legs, the small feet, the
rather large and bony head, the tiny, sharp-pricking ears, and
the fine silken coat of golden bay. He shook himself, and
snorted with evident disgust at his quarters, as he was led out
into the bright air, a king among beggars, a hero among scul
lions — and at least a fragment of my lost illusion was forth
with restored.
But there are few such creatures to be seen in Constanti
nople, though the law against exporting horses from the limits
of the Ottoman Empire is so stringent that not even those
highest in power would venture to transgress it. It is more
easily enforced, too, than the regulation which forbids the
taking away of any object whatsoever upon which are writ
ten or printed words from the sacred writings.
In connection with the horse market I am reminded of the
Saddler's Bazaar, a small quarter by itself adjoining one of the
principal streets of Stamboul, the Divan Yol. The making of
saddles and harnesses, and, generally speaking, the art of work
ing leather, was formerly in high repute in a country through
out which horses, camels, and other beasts of burden were
the only means of locomotion. The rich bestowed the great
est possible attention upon the trappings and equipments of
58

the animals they used, and the workmen who produced these
objects constituted a special guild. This art, like almost all
others in Turkey, has greatly degenerated of late years, but
certain things are still made better here than elsewhere. The
Saddler's Bazaar contains, I should think, about a hundred
and fifty shops, low, shed-like buildings in which the occu
pants sit upon little wooden platforms just above the level of
the street, with narrow verandas in front of them in which,
during the daytime, the finished wares are hung up for sale.
A great many things are made of so-called Russian leather,
which is not more Russian than it is generally Eastern, and of
which the peculiar smell is due to the process of curing by the
smoke of leaves instead of by the ordinary process of tan
ning. Here may be seen elaborate saddles, covered with
leather or stuffs or velvet, of the sort used by rich Turks in
the country, though long out of fashion in the capital, and
matched with cumbrous bridles decorated with ornamental
hand-sewing. Saddle-bags are made here, too, of all descrip
tions, shapes, and sizes, simple and ingenious and useful for
the long journeys on horseback into Asia which are often
undertaken from Constantinople. But the best articles in the
market are the mule-trunks of heavy Russian leather, admira
bly worked and nothing like which is to be found in Europe.
There is no regulation in Turkey, 1 believe, against the bur
ial of the dead within the walls of the city, but the prejudice
against the disturbing of a grave is so strong that a vast
amount of space is necessary for cemeteries. Besides innu
merable tombs and many small burial-grounds in the neigh-
59

borhood of the mosques within Stamboul, Pera, Stamboul it
self and Scutari are all bounded on the land side by an almost
continuous chain of grave -yards.
Adjoining each mosque, as a general rule, is built the tur-
beh, or tomb, of the founder and of his wives and children.
Most of these buildings are polygonal and in many cases oc
tagonal, the eight sides corresponding with the names of Al
lah, Mohammed, and the six Imams. They are the most
richly and beautifully decorated buildings in the city, and it
is in them that the most valuable specimens of writing on tiles
are to be found. The bodies of the dead are, according to
Mohammedan custom, laid in the earth at a depth equal to
the average height of a man, the grave of the Sultan or
founder of the mosque being always opposite the door, and
those of his wives and children disposed around his in sym
metrical order. Over each grave is built up a wooden coffin
or catafalque, of which the size corresponds with the impor
tance of the occupant, the largest in Stamboul being that of
Mehemet II. These coffins are covered with black velvet
palls, very richly embroidered with silver and sometimes also
with costly shawls, all of which have been to Mecca and have
lain upon the tomb of the Prophet before being finally placed
in the position they now occupy. One of the most curious
of all the turbehs is that of Selim — if I am not mistaken — a
Sultan who lies surrounded by his four wives and by no less
than forty children, boys and girls, all of whom died in in
fancy. A little white turban distinguishes the graves of the
boys from those of the girls. In each of the greater turbehs,
in a silver box, is preserved one of the countless hairs of the
60

Tomb of One of the Sultans in the Court of St. Sophia.

Prophet's beard, and a railing surrounds the graves, which in
some cases is of solid silver. These buildings are treated as
mosques, and the matted floors must not be defiled by feet
which have touched the street without. At the head of the
principal catafalque there are generally three or four folding
book-rests of magnificent workmanship, supporting splendidly
illuminated Korans, from which the mollah in charge reads
chapters at stated times in the day. Some of these illumina
tions surpass in exquisite detail of finish and color anything
to be seen in Europe, and the finest pages of the most famous
mediaeval missals would look coarse beside them.
Besides the turbehs, there are small burial-grounds attached
to many of the mosques, picturesque little places filled with
diminutive graves and irregular tomb-stones, and thickly over
grown with shrubs and rose-bushes. It is not the custom in
Turkey to keep graves in repair, and the monumental stones,
being tall and slender and generally cylindrical, soon fall out
of the perpendicular, leaning in every direction and lending
the cemeteries a wild and fantastic appearance. Until Mah
mud introduced the fez, the headstones of men's graves were
surmounted by carved representations of turbans, but since
that time the fez is in universal use, painted scarlet when new,
with a blue tassel. Upon the column below the cylinder there
is frequently a long inscription, beginning with an invocation
to God or a verse from the Koran, and followed by a short
account of the dead man's life. The tomb-stones of women
either bear no symbol at all, or, as in the great majority of
cases, are surmounted by a sunflower or something in the nat
ure of an arabesque or plant. The inscriptions on them are
63

almost invariably in verse. In very rare instances persons of
great importance have very elaborate monuments, which are
usually ugly in pro
portion as they are
intended to be beau
tiful, and like the
others are allowed to
fall to ruin. In most
of these small ceme
teries there are nar
row, well-kept walks
at a lower level than
the graves them
selves, and contrast
ing oddly with the
wild growth of trees
and shrubbery on
each side. Persons
reputed to have led
holy lives are often
buried, especially in
the country, in solita
ry graves surround
ed by elaborate grat
ings and covered by
roofs or domes, and it is not uncommon to see them brightly
illuminated at night with votive lamps, like the tombs of
saints in Catholic countries. For Mohammedans not only
reverence the memory of the dead, but believe in the effi-
64

The Cemetery.

,i.LM$3^-^

Old Towers Outside the Walls of Stamboul.

cacy of their prayers and intercessions. It is a common thing,
too, to see the shrubs about the graves of sainted personages
covered with hundreds and even thousands of scraps of rag,
torn by pilgrims from their garments and stuck on the
bushes in the belief that the offering will preserve the indi
vidual from sickness.
But the most picturesque and wild of all the places of bur
ial are the great cemeteries without the walls. Magnificent
cypresses of almost fabulous age overshadow the vast area
occupied by the bodies of the faithful, casting a deep and
gloomy shade even in midday in summer ; and there is lit
tle or no undergrowth here, for the cypress does not favor
other plants. As far as the eye can reach in every direction,
there is an interminable confusion of gray tombstones,
standing, slanting, and lying in every possible position which
a straight object can assume. Here and there at wide inter
vals a spot of bright color is visible, where the fez on a man's
tombstone has not yet lost its color under the weather. The
place is gloomy at midday, uncanny in the twilight, and
ghostly at night. It is no wonder that the Turks should be
lieve in ghosts, ghouls, vampires, and every conceivable post
humous horror. The belief in these things constitutes one
of the most deep-rooted of popular Turkish superstitions, and
the fatalistic Mussulman, who would readily face death in any
shape, would tremble like a child if obliged to pass through a
cemetery at night. As a matter of fact the burial-grounds
are by no means safe places, especially after dark, for this
very superstition makes them a very secure refuge for desert
ers and malefactors. 66

But in spite of their wild and gloomy aspect and ruinous
condition, or perhaps in consequence of this state of things,

Armenian Beggar.

the Turkish cemetery is infinitely more picturesque than the
Christian churchyard, with its abominably tasteless monu-
67

ments, its trim salad-like flower beds, and its insipid inscrip
tions — as superior in interest to an intelligent being as the
primaeval forest is to the creations of a landscape gardener.
Modern religious art seems to be bad because it has kept pace
with modern fashion, an error of which the Mussulman can
not be accused. There is something incongruous in treating
dead men like books, to be arranged in neat order and cata
logued as volumes are in a library. No one who clings to
old-fashioned ideas can conceive of finding rest in such a neat
and business-like establishment as a modern Christian ceme
tery. Since we do not believe in the worship of ancestors, as
the Chinese do, and since those of us who believe in a future
state are convinced that rest and reward or unrest and pun
ishment are for the soul and not for the body, it seems both
foolish and wicked to expend enormous sums for the preser
vation of what is by the hypothesis utterly worthless. Better
to lie on the mountain-side under the sky, or to be dropped
into the sea with a weight at one's feet, or at least to be put
quietly away without expense — or even to occupy a nameless
grave under the Turkish cypresses, than to be the prey of the
modern undertaker, sexton, marble-cutter, and municipality.
But, after all, though death be a matter of necessity, burial
will always be a matter of taste.
I have hitherto said little about Pera, Galata, and the thickly
populated suburbs on the northern side of the Golden Horn.
The ancient city of the Genoese never formed a part of Con
stantinople, and will never be really incorporated with the
Turkish capital. It is true that the Sultan now lives in Yildiz
Kiosk, above the farther end of Beshik Tash, the "cradle
68

Entrance to the Municipal Garden at Pera — After the Concert — Twilight.

stone," on the Bosphorus, and the presence of the sovereign
has naturally attracted a great number of high officials to the
neighborhood. But Pera and Galata are chiefly inhabited by
Christians and Jews, many of them being Europeans, and the
aspect of the streets is consequently far less Oriental and less
interesting. Pera, as everyone knows, is the aristocratic
quarter, in which the European Embassies have their residences
in winter and where successful Levantine financiers build
themselves gorgeous palaces in the midst of reeking slums.
As for Galata, it is the fermenting vat of the scum of the
earth. It is doubtful whether in any city in the globe such an
iniquitous population could be found as that which is huddled
together by the water's edge from Kassim Pasha to Tophane.
It is indeed an interesting region to the student of criminal
physiognomy, for the lowest types of what must necessarily be
called the civilized criminal classes fill the filthy streets, the
poisonous lanes, and the reeking liquor-shops, the terror of the
Europeans above and the object of righteous hatred and loath
ing to the Turks on the other side. The Greeks and Arme
nians, who lead a sort of underground existence, here make a
good living, and by no means a precarious one, by a great
variety of evil practices. Being all Christians, they all claim
the protection of one or other of the European Embassies, and
the political situation of Turkey renders it practically im
possible for the Ottoman authorities to arrest or punish one
of these malefactors, the slightest interference with whose
liberty might at once be made a casus belli by the foreign
government whose protection he would claim. There is hardly
a liquor-shop in Galata, and there are few even among the
7i

more respectable cafe's in Pera in which a gambling hell is
not kept in a quiet room at the back of the establishment. If
the visitor's good luck survives the ordeal of a roulette-table
having two zeros and nine or ten numbers, so that he actually
wins something that he might take away with him, the estab
lishment has at its disposal a private police force to rob him
and, if necessary, to cut his throat so soon as he makes for
the door.
As for Scutari, on the other side of the Bosphorus, it is a
city of a very different type. The Turk is an Asiatic, and at
the junction of the two continents distinguishes very clearly
between the two. There are comparatively few Christians on
the Asian side, and the houses which line the quiet streets
show by their latticed windows that they are inhabited by
Mussulmans. There is a certain air of peace, if not of pros
perity, about Scutari, which is very restful after the crowded
bazaars of Stamboul and the choking slums of Galata. There
are few people in the streets, the carriages are old and
shabby, and in the country, if not in Scutari itself, these are
outnumbered by the primaeval ox-carts — low, long-bodied
conveyances upon clumsy wheels, any one of them big enough
to transport a whole family with its belongings. One often
sees these family parties. The women and children, the
former more closely veiled than in Stamboul, sit close together
side by side from end to end, the paterfamilias generally
squatting by himself at the tail of the cart. His expression
resembles that of the European father under the same cir
cumstances — a combination of anxiety, weariness, and shyness
by no means becoming to the solemn Oriental face. The
72

The Landing Place and Cafe* at Scutari.

women, on the other hand, are intensely interested in the
sights and incidents of the journey, and look longingly at your
light carriage as you drive swiftly by. But there is not much
to be seen in Scutari, unless you will take the trouble to climb
the steep hill for the sake of the really magnificent view-
obtained there.
Kadi Keui, the ancient Chalcedon, is a much more interest
ing place, is more pleasantly situated, and, moreover, affords
an attraction in the shape of a Turkish theatre, the only one
existing in Constantinople or in the neighborhood. The play
house is a flimsy construction of boards at the end of the
broad meadow behind the town, the scenery is sketchy, the
music abominable, and the audience consists entirely of men.
But the establishment is owned and managed by a first-rate
comic actor, a Turk of the Turks, who, if he were well sup
ported, would do credit to any stage in the world. There are
not more than two or three performances a week, which take
place entirely by daylight, and it is the practice of the theatre
to await the convenience of the audience before ringing up
the curtain. Though the building is of the nature of tinder,
everyone smokes perpetually, and as usual where Turks are
gathered together, the ice-cream vender and the coffee seller
are constantly in demand. The action of the pieces is located
in more or less mythical Eastern countries, and the plays
depend entirely for their success upon the talent of the acting
manager and proprietor. But even for one unacquainted with
the language, his acting is worth seeing.
Beyond Kadi Keui, on the Sea of Marmora, and in full view
of the Islands of the Princes, lies one of the most beautiful
74

spots in the whole neighborhood. The Fenar Bagche, the
Light-house Garden, is a lovely grove at the seaward end of
a narrow tongue of land. In successive ages the ancient
plane-trees have overshadowed a temple of Hera, a summer
palace of Justinian, and the wild flowers which have over
grown the foundations of both. Here in the hot summer the
sea-breeze blows perpetually ; the Greek fishermen dry their
nets in the sun and rest in the shade ; and in the " Bay of
Reeds," between the point and the fashionable Moda Burnu,
a few yachts and pleasure-boats ride lazily at anchor.
This side is rapidly outdoing the Bosphorus in the public
estimation as a summer residence, and the land is rising very
quickly in value. The air is drier, and in the evening there
is not what the guides call the " cold draught " from the
Black Sea. The shore has but one defect, the almost total
absence of trees, except at such points as Moda Burnu and
Fenar Bagche.
Of the Bosphorus itself it is scarcely possible to speak
within these narrow limits. There is a great difference in
opinion in regard to its beauty, but for my part I do not think
it compares with the Gulf of Naples or with the southern
coast of the Crimea. An irreverent American recently said that
the Bosphorus was like the Lake of Como drawn through a
keyhole. This is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is not
without a foundation of truth. The massive towers of
Kumeli and Anadoli Hissar, the European and Asiatic castles
of Mehemet II., are imposing and picturesque, and the current
of the Bosphorus runs between them at a rate which has
earned it the name of the " Devil's Stream." But there is
75

The Sultan's Kiosk — "Sweet Waters of Europe,"

little else that has any claim to be called grand between •
Scutari and the mouth of the Black Sea. On the other hand,
the shores are crowded with villages, villas, and dwellings of
every description from the Imperial Palaces of Dolma Bagche
and Beylerbey to the humble fishermen's huts below Anadoli
Kavak. Until lately the Bosphorus was exclusively and
especially considered the fashionable summer-resort of Min
isters of State, Ambassadors, and rich Greeks; but, as has
been already said, it is now losing its prestige in favor of
Moda Burnu and the Islands of the Princes. Nevertheless it
has a charm and enchantment of its own. The low undulating
hills are covered with gardens, many beautiful buildings rise
from the water's edge, and the water itself is crowded with
craft of all sorts. There is little to distinguish one village
from the next, though there are a few points of especial
beauty, such as the Valley of the Blue Water — called by
Europeans the " Sweet Waters of Asia," where the Turks
congregate on Friday afternoons, as at Kiathane, with their
wives and families and cigarettes — Therapia, Buyukdere, and
the Valley of Roses. At Buyukdere, which means " the great
valley," the Belgrade forest begins, stretching away for many
miles to the shores of the Black Sea, as wild and beautiful a
tract of woodland as can be imagined.
There are good roads through it in many directions, and
many bridle paths, over which one may ride thirty miles on
a summer's afternoon, almost without leaving the shade ; and
if one cares for contrasts — which after all are the levers
whereby beauty moves the world — one may find them here.
It is toward four o'clock as you mount, and the quay of
77

Buyukdere is beginning to be crowded again ; the steamers are
coming and going to and from the pier, and the white-shirted
Kaikjis are alert for passengers; the Persian merchants are
beginning to unroll
their carpets for sale
under the trees ; a
dozen smart saddle-
horses are led up
and down by Turk
ish grooms, the itin
erant barber is shav
ing the head of a
boatman in a shady
corner, and the ice
cream seller yells
" dondurma kai-
mak." Out on the
blue water three or
four white - sailed
cutters belonging to
idle diplomatists are
slowly beating up
against wind and
current, and the
smell of warm roses
Old Gateway in the Wall which has been Blocked up
with a House. floats out through
the gates of the Russian Embassy garden. You ride away
from it all, through the narrow little street beyond, between
the shops of the butchers and bakers and grain-sellers, to
78

the broad Meidan. Up to the right through the valley,
then, and away into the mysterious forest, till you have
left it all behind you — Stamboul, the Bosphorus, the Greeks,
the Turks, the Armenians, and the diplomatists. And at
last, if you ride far, you will come out when the sun is low
upon a bleak moor which ends suddenly with the sharp
precipice of a perpendicular cliff. There you may dismount
from your horse and stand by the ruins which once were the
house of exiled Ovid, gazing out upon the pale waves of
the lonely sea, and dreaming, perhaps, of the land no longer
distant from you now, which was the cradle of all those
races, good and bad, that have struggled, and struggle still,
and will strive for ages yet, over the world's great bone
of contention — Constantinople.

79

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